


Making Waves aka. Whatever Happened To Sam Swift

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Series: Doctor Clara-Verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5395211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(post Woman Who Lived, pre/during Hell Bent)</p>
<p>Sam Swift, Me and understanding their 'immortality'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Waves aka. Whatever Happened To Sam Swift

 

_“Barring accidents, she may now be functionally immortal.”_

 

Sam Swift is nothing like her. She may appear to be risking her neck, but most of the time she knows she’s in no more danger than she can cope with. Keeps a vague set of rules of when to fight and when to fold.

Sam Swift fights for justice. Or for money. Or beer. He’ll fight for anything he can get. He’s young enough to see his ‘immortality’ as a gift, a get-off-the-gallows-free pardon, and not see all of its little tricks and conditions in their tiny invisible print. So he continues to live his life, but perhaps more carefree than before. He’s a rogue, thief and charlatan. And he has more of an impact in twenty years than she has had in two-hundred. 

Which is good. Because that’s all he gets.

She hears about it as town gossip - “Shot in the ‘ead by some swindlers. They say he was double-crossing ‘em. I know a man said ‘is ‘ead looked like Mrs Martin’s beetroot preserve. Nasty business.”

People talk about him for a while. Memories become stories, stories become songs and legends, and one day even these fade from the mind - hers too. Just an invisible influence on how she thinks and feels about life beyond its bounds.

She had never used her second chip, how could she? She understands this ‘immortality’ better than anyone. She wasn’t always sure she had wanted to be saved, and she can’t imagine doing that to someone she cared about. Even someone’s death can be their own, and she couldn’t take that away from them because of her own selfish whim that they should live. In giving it to Sam Swift to save the many and right her wrong, she justifies it - life as a side-effect. But her fears are also justified. He doesn’t understand his ‘immortality’, he goes further than he ever would have before, tempts fate past her breaking point and he dies. By giving him a taste of forever, she damned him to die before he would have done with his mayfly’s lifespan.

And yet, he was happy. Perhaps that really is the way to live? Because as she dips her feet in the waves those braver than her have created, she wonders what it would be like to kick up some of her own. If this is really understanding ‘immortality’, then what is she doing with it? Making barely a ripple…

Billions of years later her life is over. Nowhere else to go. The abyss is brighter than she thought it would be, it seems to pull her into it as if starving for her. After all those years of being careful, this is where she is destined to die. 

Then she finds herself joining the ranks of the not-so-immortals putting off their imminent deaths. Trenzalore unvisited, their backs to the raven and a universe that’ll just have to go hungry. And in rush of something put off for an exceedingly long lifetime, she remembers, not his name, not even his existence, but that spark he left behind. ‘Immortality’ is relative. Time to make some waves.


End file.
